Security Agencies Report No Incidents

November 3, 2004|By David Johnston The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Terrorism command centers were activated in dozens of states and cities throughout the country on Tuesday because of fears of an election-year attack. Security authorities said that emergency personnel were on standby alert but there were no reports of any incidents.

In the capital, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the CIA were stationed at their emergency command posts, but officials reported little activity beyond routine reports from their field units, which indicated no sign of terror activity.

The relative tranquility of Election Day contrasted with the high anxiety of the preceding months when counterterrorism officials repeatedly had warned of a potentially catastrophic attack by al-Qaida inside the United States timed to disrupt the electoral process. In recent days, these officials said they had uncovered no evidence of such an operation, after thousands of interviews in the United States and a global effort to track down anti-American extremists.

In May, July and August, senior law enforcement and intelligence authorities made urgent announcements about the terror threat warning that al-Qaida was almost ready to strike. They issued dozens of bulletins to state and local officials advising them to be increasingly vigilant.

Some officials said they suspected that an attack of some kind might still be coming. They said the period of concern should be extended from the election through the presidential inauguration in January.

But some hinted that the government might soon downshift its terror warnings. "Following the election, we will assess the threat environment and the alert status to determine what security posture we will need to have in place based on intelligence assessments," said Brian Roehrkasse, the spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

At the Justice Department, spokesman Mark Corallo said, "We're still working overtime. The FBI and all of our partners at the state and local level are pounding the pavement, pressing sources for information, staying on top of it. We're doing everything we can to detect and disrupt the terrorist threat. And if nothing happens, we're going to be out there tomorrow doing the same thing."

Officials said that absence of any tangible sign of an attack had led them to a new assessment of the possible significance of a recent videotape by Osama bin Laden, which was first broadcast Friday by the Arab-language satellite network al-Jazeera and transmitted by television outlets around the world.

On the videotape bin Laden directly addressed Americans in an unusually formal statement in which he said, "Your security is not the hands of Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands."